


home

by ruruka



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: set directly after the events of dr1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-26 19:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15007643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruruka/pseuds/ruruka
Summary: things can’t get better if they don’t feel bad first.





	home

Naegi likes to sugarcoat things. Whether it is harsh realities or breakfast cereals, he likes them sugarcoated.

Togami wears a European size 44 steel toe that does not hesitate in crushing the windpipes of those already kneed in the middle.

Hagakure...is there as well.

Opposite ends of magnets cling to one another, though in their dull walled holding room they've spread as far as possible without turning to stucco themselves. Two rooms for six people, _people_ \- oh, what a word. Two rooms, four beds, all to fit the survivors of the macabre picture show put on by one twintailed tap dancing devil, all to keep them protected for rehabilitation they'll find nowhere outside the cement of these headquarters. That's what they'd been told, their tattered shaking forms all rounded up by the keen eye and bourbon breath of a scouter that had recognized those sweet lilac braids anywhere, had heard their story and brought them home like six kittens mewling in a cardboard box for a mother's censure to spurn. This mother had been stricken in nonplus to take them all in, Hope's Peak, Hope's Peak Academy- oh, oh you poor things-! and they hadn't known it such a deal then for the pretty woman in her big blue dress to go fetch a tight lipped tight assed businessman in a pressed white suit, though Naegi had noticed Togami's posture contract just a tad on his presence, his pen clicking, glare thinning presence, on which he'd talked to the woman as though the refugees were too deaf from a day in chaos that they wouldn't hear him describing them as dirty rags. He'd liked the way her palm had smarted against the man's forearm before mouthing back something fierce to contest an absence of compassion. The man's eyes had flexed in shock to her outburst. They'd been split up by sex (identity! that sweet sweet woman had corrected, and he'd been so close to begging her to just let him room with the girls anyway, though thought better of willingly being confined to ten square feet with another who hasn't bathed since infancy) stuck into two rooms with four beds and told to behave.

So, right, backstory swept beneath the rug of his thoughts again, where he's lain to a cot in his plain white tee shirt gifted as part of their makeshift mother's care packages to all of them. Yukizome, she'd introduced herself as, told them all to call her Chisa with a smile far exceeding plain benevolence. Asahina had cheered at the idea of matching outfits, to be met with a haughty scoff and comment about furthering Stockholm syndrome, but Togami had succumbed to the need for a swap of clothes after not two full hours in the chaffing facility. Yukizome is a nice woman. He wonders where his real mother is now, shifts arms beneath the head to peer at the ceiling. There'd been soap gifted to them, too. Lavender scented. The smell of lavender makes his stomach ache, but he appreciates Yukizome more than any other he's met in the outside world thus far.

"You think they got satellite TV around here?" billows from the nest of bedding in the corner adjacent him. From the opposite, where the second cot had scraped metal frame to concrete a good meter to shove it as far secluded as possible the very first night, Togami scoffs.

Naegi recalls scoping inside the girls' room where the two beds sat pushed together. A twist collects his mouth; it isn't as though they're captives here, that life had ended just recently and still stings with each session of thought in the night's most vermillion hours. Sometimes he could swear with both hands to God that he hears their voices. Her singing. His howling. Every throat rawing terror. Sometimes he says he's gone to take a shower, and there'll be steam from beneath that door he swears he _swears_ , and he'll open it with a pulse in the throat to flash his sick mind into memory alone, ones that slam the door back shut and push him into bed early. Togami had told him he was starting to stink up their room. He'd laughed then, and smothered his wrists in hand soap.

Their days are not so easy when juxtaposed to the dastardly nighttime murk; Yukizome will rap on the door the same note she's pushing it opened, tell them good morning, boys, breakfast is waiting! The blankets in the corner are always quick to ruffle around the rise of broad shoulders taking haste at the smell of yolks popping over thick margarined toast. Naegi makes his way out a bit afterwards, never accustomed to waking before noon like the teenage boy he's felt he is for so long now, and all the girls will be sitting in a row with Asahina gabbing away about how to mass produce pastries at lightning speed and Yukizome nodding her along with a glint in the eye; Fukawa quakes and glowers her way through a serving of tsukemono as her eyes shift this and that, and his own will settle on ones that are rare to match it these days. Kirigiri plays with the bag in her tea cup. He wishes she'd say something.

That first man who'd found them all, he'd called himself Kizakura, though Yukizome had called him a drunken old hound with a flicker of aged friendship in her tone- he's hardly ever far off from them, it seems. Once he'd staggered into the conference room in which they're served their meals, he'd tipped his hat at the ladies and acted a pure fool until stabbed into sobriety by the cut of her voice; merely, Kirigiri hadn't liked the way he'd moved to touch her hair, fingers through the silk, and her own had lifted to combat them in a slap to pair with a flinty, "Keep away from me."

Even then had Fukawa been caught mid mouthbreathing chew to take on astonishment, awkward anxiety of all the group tethered at the opposite side of the table, "Hey, you can feel up my dreads if you want."

Togami Byakuya's cue to join in normal civilization arrives only once he's meticulously met every inch of skin in lavender and his hair is combed neat and he's fresh in each step as a plant comes to bud. He lifts a hand to the coffee pot at the center of tepid breakfast plates, pours a mug full and places himself in the bare seat beside Naegi (the absolute farthest point from the one drooling at his entry diagonal across the table). Breathing becomes a tax.

On occasion, they'll be cajoled into talking to the woman down the hall, who, for a therapist, doesn't have much to say at all. Naegi supposes that makes the best listener, giving the benefit of the doubt to her kind blue eyes as they bore into him. It was his turn today, Yukizome had urged, his turn to let out that ache slicing his ribcage down the center. Round the corner, he's heard her whisper tales of his wounds being deepest of them all. When Gekkogahara asks how his day has been, a run of the mill Tuesday in their rehab chamber, his gaze rolls to face the carpet fibers, finger prodding the bottom lip. "Well," he tells her, "I'm wondering if sleeping on the floor hurts Hagakure and Fukawa's backs. Maybe we should all switch off some nights, to be fair."

Asahina never exits that office door without tear stains on her smile. Kirigiri and Togami are both in the running for least words spilt. He'd like to approach Gekkogahara with the idea of couples counseling for the both of them after the third _discussion_ he's had to step between in fear of the dinner cutlery taking on a new hobby, but within the month they find themselves all circled together in plastic chairs like grade schoolers at break time, the conference room forsaken for its boundary middle table. Gekkogahara moves to sit alongside them all, holds her palm out, and instructs in her tiny rasp of a voice, "Talk."

" _Talk?_ " A length of cheap fabric rests folded over in a cross of legs, arms to match, nose high as all priggish bastards hold. Togami's rich blues swivel to the ceiling. "As though that has ever done anyone any good."

"B-Byakuya's right..." intervenes the rat nest to his left. "All of you have brains as th-thin as printer paper, nothing you could say is worth our time!"

Togami stands up enough to drag his seat a meter backward, sits in the same compact position as if never disturbed a touch. Green eyes pinch in woe.

"Miaya-san is right, you guys!" calls all attention to Asahina, leg curled beneath her and fists pumped in determination. "We'll never get better if we just keep all of our feelings bottled up inside. What happened to us all was...was..." The trail leads to the faintest droop in character, shaking of the head, though she's back at tip top performance to grin and point rightward before the minute passes. "Hagakure, you start!"

Smallest finger stuffed in the ear is where he is caught, glances to her in a lift of the brows, a long drawling _ummm..._ before it is that he says, "Yeah, huh, that was all wild, but it sure is bitchin' here! Free meals, no rent- and I get to room with Togamichi and Naegichi! My bed's super comfy, too!"

"Shut your mouth, b-b-bohemian neanderthal!" caterwauls Fukawa in her finger stab across the circle. "Byakuya doesn't want to be sharing his space with your filth! H-He deserves an apology just for you existing!"

Where her halo ring stare goes over one shoulder for approval, Togami offers a plain halfway shrug. "I'd rather share a cardboard box with ten of him than all of Versailles with you."

Fukawa's expression pinches in on itself before exploding back out into stumbling surprise, until she's able to collect herself back up into a ball, hands clutching the mouth that spews forward, "Of course, y-you wouldn't be able to keep your hands off of me then... Master's only trying to save-save me from the vice of premarital p-passion..!"

"Is there some sort of human resources department around here?" clips Togami in a crane of the neck Gekkogahara's way. "I have a sexual abuse case to report that'll keep you up for a decade."

The therapist shrinks the slightest bit, and that's when Naegi finds himself slipping a glance to his side in a soft searching. The group therapy session so far hasn't proved a remedy. Gentle looks aimed his way work much better for it, which Kirigiri delivers to him in the midst of rising bickers; Asahina has since huffed up to combat the sharpest cynic in the silver lenses, Togami snapping back something or other about the air in her head being enough to float them all to safety, skirting past her tempting ire by Hagakure asking in sniffs if the others smell oregano all the sudden. But Kirigiri is looking at him, just looking, and he glances to her chest (real big surprise coming from Naegi Makoto, sure, sure) as it intakes air, breathes a soft hymn of an exhale for him to gather. Naegi nods to her, allows his eyes their rest a moment in his own quiet sanctuary.

"I th-I think that we should...a-ah, um..." Their supervisor wets her lips. "I think we should all calm down...please..."

A full sentence- Naegi wishes he had the time to bear pride, but Togami's thrown himself in such ferocity from his seat that it teeters behind his lash forward. "I've had _more_ than enough of this! You truly expect me to believe the field of psychology is more than a hoax to get simpletons to snivel away their money for a pat on the back? Preposterous. I refuse to participate in this any longer."

Wide maws for either eye, Gekkogahara grips one wheel to push herself back from the outburst, which he's recovering from in a stroke of heat to the cheekbones and gaze stolen elsewhere. Naegi winces at the shoulders. He's always thought earning thousands of yen an hour just to be cried at seems a little odd, he's been doing that for free ever since his sister was born. But never would he say it aloud to someone in the profession, and...and his sister, ah-

"Togami is right," breaks through in a calm wash, knuckle curled to the chin type of pondering. And he can only _pray_ that Kirigiri plays a civil bitch this time around. "Being so proud of a useless title is a waste. There isn't room for another person like that here."

The dead lock of their eyes reminds Naegi of panthers prowling through jungle brush, and he cannot afford the offense at Fukawa's sudden lolled tongue laughter and point his direction, though she's quick to notice all other focuses have shifted to behind herself where, too, her lenses twist. Togami does not shift. Kirigiri folds gloved hands within her lap.

"Haah-! Togamichi's turning all red! Looks like his head's gonna explode!"

"Don't point at him like that, Hagakure! You'll make it worse!"

" _M-Master?_ What did that d-dirty detective skank do to my prince?!"

Time does not stop nor does it continue. Naegi sits in silent whiplash, feels this morning's milk and toast singing in his stomach as he watches the unfolding of nature's deepest held ash.

Darkened so smartly, Togami rests in a duck of the head, though lifts now to snap himself a glare for every participant in the room, sends an icicle choking Naegi down the trachea. "...Kirigiri, if I were you, I would truly think twice about insulting me whilst simultaneously being such an iniquitous _bastard_ yourself."

"Please-please no namecall-"

"I will not _stand_ here and be berated so callously without a lick of repercussion," he aims downward in hot scorn. "If you are as well versed in humanity as you so claim, _Gekkogahara_ , you'd know that that is only basic instinct."

"Togami is right," is all Kirigiri has to say, and when he casts a look her way, her only reply is an inch of a smirk just for him.

One day post Class 78 survivors' therapy session, Gekkogahara arrives for work tucked into a thick red scarf, and Naegi hasn't heard a word from her since.

"I'm guh- going _crazy_ trapped in here with all of you," Fukawa sputters one evening. The washroom mirror reflects her pacing back, forth behind bristles scrubbing over teeth. Naegi stands betwixt the rest of the girls, feels close to wanting to perk himself up on his toes but refuses the idea to better focus on that brush in his mouth. Their routine has been solid the while they've called this facility home, though the recent finds a more unified stance over the basins; Togami lifts himself after spitting into one, farthest down the line though still _there_ , wow, and the water rinsing over his toothbrush does not at all hinder the crisp clarity of his commander's voice. "No one's asked you to join us. Feel free to find your way in the world at any time."

Hunched in on herself, Fukawa snaps her look his way, lips wet with spit but dry of ever having joined the routine before that farthest sink had begun taking a guest. But she looks to him, quivering, says, "I couldn't! I'd never leave Byakuya behind with th-these cretins!" A glow of allured dream lights her eyes, and there's a stage fx type AHCOO! and the tone behind them deepens into guffawing, "Besides! No better a fuck around here than me, you'd be lost! _GAHAHA!_ "

The tip of a towel massages either chiseled side of his jawline. "Naegi suffices well enough," knocks the mentioned one's toothbrush to the tile.

Through loose hazelnut, the comb teeth pause, expression pressing the tongue outward. "Gross! Now I'm glad they put us in separate rooms."

"A-Asahina, we don't-!" Naegi peels a wide glance to the shift in the mirror before him. A scraggly cloud of muted gray pokes her nose in the air, before the eyes above behind crooked lenses roll back as pinballs in a backward crumple to the ground.

" _Fukawa?!_ "

"Oh, God!" It snaps his frazzle to the sink three paces away, where Hagakure stands a sheet white shock looming over her frothing, crumbled form. One hand clutching the head, his other shifts to rummage through heavy sweatpant pockets. "I'm all out of floss!"

A while passes of blank staring his way, fore it trades back to the code blue, up toward the one who'd caused it, leant to the mirror with a gaze written in the purest bored normality.

Kirigiri bends forward, spits her toothpaste into the sink, and makes to step out of the washroom.

From his cot, he hears Asahina dragging the last girl to their room some time later, hears the door click and the voices muffled past the connecting wall. Within his own four, Hagakure's already snoring in his burrow, and Togami hasn't lost a staring match with the corner a single night thus far. Naegi is rather alone now- that's alright, that's alright, just like Fukawa said, they'll all lose their sensibilities without some time apart. The notion had and does over again remind him of the rat in a cage mentality thrust upon them all those days, only ever feeling that much more suffocating with every opening of new area. Because the wider their playing field expanded, the less footsteps remained to clip about it, and perhaps he had just slightly prayed his after school lesson lasted an eternity, but being here, being here now with everyone else who's persevered beyond the dark with more bruises than skin, is what they need. They, those five others with each a fresh hook on his heart, they need him to be here and to be strong. Should his face spin no courage, the others will not be far behind to fall. And he isn't so brash to think himself salient beyond salience, merely a lighthouse, thick scarlet stripes beckoning the clouds to stay scarce. They need hope.

They, and they, too, who have no longer a thrum to decide either way, who he knows fought and they _fought_ and nothing is anyone's fault, they fought hard and valiant and he's just as proud of those nine as he is of these five. They need him to carry on each day, each day to ensure their departures to the next life have been in no vain. He'll do it, _goddamn it_ will he do it, even if it kills him too.

Naegi breathes the thick air of their windowless room through the nose. His eyes burn fierce, but he's twice the ferocity in his heart. And it is quick to be needed tenfold when morning comes all over again, and Yukizome's ordering them all to rise and to shine and to come quick, come quick, we're all waiting! From the rumpled ball of his blankets, Naegi shifts his gaze forward to where she's already gone, watches instead Togami's crawl into standing like a scuttling centipede, his squinting eyes thin and crusted with sleep as he coughs and sputters to find his glasses with the hunch of the back and sheepdog bedhead working against him.

(That's what Naegi would like to see, an average man who's brittle and dusty at sunrise, though his sights set every morning only upon the Togami Byakuya who stands up out of bed and appears a perfect clone to himself any other hour of the day, not even allowing his hair to be mussed or breath to stink, he'd go so far to guess. Perfect bastard.)

He tumbles himself out into the hall, falls into step with Asahina's cheered, "Morning, Naegi!" as they move toward the conference room. Behind her curious chatter, footsteps patter. A calm meets his throat.

No longer does it last than the second it arrives, for never has he been one to be able to hide from the sting of shyness in spotting unfamiliarity, though this unfamiliar face in particular seems to mirror it, makes him worry less for his own fluttering valor. Yukizome stands beside the woman they've yet to meet. A fist pumps into sweet moxie, the other rested to the girl's leather coated shoulder.

"Everyone, this is Kimura Seiko, the head of our medical branch," introduces Yukizome. Behind the thick fabric of her mask, he cannot tell what expression she bears, though the speaker continues, "She went to Hope's Peak Academy, too. Her pharmaceutical skills are top notch!"

"And just what does this have to do with us?" Togami stands with a foot placed forward, arms cross the chest. "Run out of mice?"

Kimura flinches at the harsh edge to his tone. Aside her, Yukizome tucks her hands at the front of her skirt. "Kimura has been working on a serum to restore your memories."

Naegi can _feel_ the depth his eyes expand at her blunt push forward. The reaction seems to newton ball its way down the row of them, silence quick to be shattered as it always is with the six of them in one space.

"Our memories..." is his own input, hardly daring to be a whisper, a reality. If anything, he'd like a medicine that could relieve him of some. The contemplation doesn't allow itself to last long, sliced by the sharpest analyst of them all. "I'd like to know how it works before I agree to anything."

Kirigiri's eyes seem to flash, only further clenching Kimura at the shoulders as she struggles to meet them. "It...it's an injection-"

" _Injection?!_ " Both of Hagakure's arms wrap about Togami's nearest. "N-No way! Needles scare the fart outta me!"

"Well-Well i-it only lasts a second!" Kimura rushes to spit, one gloved palm waving the frantic. "The vincamine stimulates your hippocampus and-"

"And we're all the variables in your little experiment," Togami scoffs as he yanks himself freed from the other's shaking grasp. It isn't long before Fukawa adds, "She wants to u-use us for some freaky mutation stunt... They’ve been grooming us in preparation for it the whole time!”

“Maybe it’s not such a bad idea,” murmurs Asahina’s finger to bottom lip contemplation. “I mean, it’ll give us back the memories of being at school for real- the good stuff, before all the bad. If I could remember her, even a little more...” She intakes a breath, lashes clenched to passion that expels from her so suddenly, “I want to remember our friends! It’s-It’s what they deserve...isn’t it?”

Five sets of eyes wash along her, grim. Then, in all the world’s determination as he’s always the bearer of, a foot lands forward.

“Let’s do it,” Naegi nods. “Asahina is right, in order to carry on everyone’s memory, we have to have them first.”

Though staid through the room, a smile perks Yukizome’s glossed mouth, matched by a newfound grin on Naegi’s that pingpongs to Asahina and Hagakure, and Fukawa would have held that faint, faint look of tenderness longer had he not sent her into a stiffened glowering by glancing her way. Sheepishly he offers a chortling, faces back to their superiors in another firm nod of the head. They’ve begun to be ushered down a corridor toward the medical wing, though a sudden protest coughed up from Togami that they be separated for the _procedure_ , as he’s put it, stalls the entrance into her one wide chrome laboratory. Naegi, in a certain sort of sorts, agrees with the notion, thinks it a private affair of sentiment, yet all the same never spurns the comfort of leather and lilac at his side. Either way, Kimura doesn’t appear to have refused a sharp demand a single day in her life, and she’s only shaking the slightest bit to guide them all to their own rooms. The lab they’d taunted is granted to Naegi himself. He waits with hands gripping denim for her return, close to sweating clean through the underarms of his tee until the knob rattles messy.

“Morning, kiddo,” Kizakura greets him in a broad smile. He strolls himself over to the table beside the patient, setting down a stout glass vial of something thick and violet with a needle alongside. Naegi murmurs a hello back, slipping his breaths evened. Kizakura does not hesitate to chatter him soothed. “Exciting, no? I’m about to help you become a man.”

“Ah,” goes his concern for the other’s shaky touch, “...You’re giving me the injection?”

Preparing it in a dip unto the slosh of serum, he nods still in that easy smile. “Kyouko didn’t want me, but I like you well enough. You’re a good one, I can sense it.” Wonder aims toward the liquid being drunk up inside the needle. Kizakura knocks the end gainst a knuckle, flicks droplets astray. “At least you’ll give me less of a hard time than Togami. I’ll bet Sakakura’s having a field day with him. Ready?”

Naegi doesn’t think he’ll ever have an answer for that, so he braces himself, allows Kizakura to roll his sleeve up over the shoulder, nods into clamping the eyes. He’s reminded of every crinkly papered clinic table he’d been sat up upon for vaccinations in childhood, where he’d always been his mother’s brave little man and earned a mouthful of daifuku while Komaru shrieked away in her carseat beside him. The pink Hello Kitty bandage stuck to her arm never worked well enough as compensation as it did for himself, he supposes. It’d never bothered him so much when his baby sister would throw her baby sister fits, he’d known from a mere five years old that she couldn’t help it, wasn’t out of spite or all else, and he’d done his best always to play the heroic big brother to calm her after every disturbed nap, scrapes to the knees during backyard roughhousing, lack of kisses from the family dog that shied away from loud little girls and their rough sticky palms. He’d been there for her. He should be now- all the meager aches of growing up cannot be magnified a million times and come close to what she now feels, he knows it. If she can even still feel, the blackest fraction of his mind must taunt, but he refuses to listen. His sister is alive. She’s out there somewhere, and she’ll be found and she’ll run into his arms and shout _Makoto, you big dumb jerk! Why didn’t you come find me sooner?!_ Perhaps he allows a smile at the thought; his sister’s a sweet one, though she does bite as any other bratty baby will to their elder sibling.

The tape had meant nothing. It was made specifically to tempt his mind into frenetics. She’s alive, as are their parents, as are all the special someones made out to be missing to further the motive. Haneyama and Aoba- Naegi can only assume them the targets within Maizono’s video, with her shock jawed reaction that still rests so fresh within his mind. Of those memories he’d begged to forget, that’s high on the list, the way she’d wept and wept into his chest in such desperate gravity, such a strong stink of anguish it felt enough to drive her perfectly mad. But, and his muscles all tighten, he wants to be rid of it, which makes thinking so deeply on it now an imbecile’s fantasy, and it is punted beneath the bed with all the rest of the junk just in time for guests to arrive to his spotless home. These guests, he pictures them now, the _good_ times, and how banal a description, but it is so purely _good_ in such a time of torment he feels it an implosion of vivid color. It was good, the way Maizono Sayaka had walked with him through those halls and chattered on about her summer plans, and he’d hung onto every last word while gazing at such a breathtaking beauty he could hardly believe she was real, never mind his best friend through foreign and fire. There’d been a time they’d all say at lunch together- _all_ , filled the expanse of two table with the elite sixteen of them. They’d eaten and they’d laughed and it’d been nothing shy of perfect mirth until _someone_ (Kuwata) had made a remark about the posh entitlement and stupid rich guy glasses of _someone_ else (come on, guess) and the details in between sit fuzzy, but Naegi recalls clearly the disciplinary slip burning through his hand for intervening in whatever oncoming brawl had risen and looking from an outside eye as thickly involved. Maizono’s giggle at his grumpy face rings still with him, how she’d poked fun at his lucky title perhaps not suiting him, though he remembers, too, that his teacher had called him out halfway through wiping down the blackboards to apologize, newly informed by an anonymous student source of what had really occurred. He’d been stuck with so much awe that he’d only been able to insist on staying, anyway, help Kuwata finish up (since Togami had so mysteriously proven absent in time for the cleaning session).

It amuses Naegi especially to recollect on him now, especially, high class hoity toity Togami Byakuya in his plain brown uniform and quiet back row seat. There’d been no day where his presence had been allowed to be forgotten, he knows full and well, though Togami had held a certain level of...mellow, he thinks. Right, right- never before has such a word been used to describe him, but Naegi savors knowing they could have very nearly called one another _friends_ , then, before all the hellfire, before all the wounds. Togami was a good friend. Good. That excites his eyebrows into a raise. Perhaps the hot pursuit to follow his every move throughout investigations had stemmed from a vague connection neither could place. Never the sweet love to smile him good morning or offer him brownies, no, but he’d only _slightly_ meant the offhand comments from time to time, would sit by him in free period with arms unfolded and tongue lashing through straight fat minutes of palavering on to him; it’d been his shadow behind Naegi’s shoulder the after school stepping through the middle courtyard, winter crunching beneath, when the ratty brown puppy had yapped its way up to his ankles. Naegi had forgotten this particular day, where he’d begged in enough conviction for Togami agree to bringing the dog in from the cold, where all their classmates had rejoiced at the little fiend panting in circles around the cafeteria floor. The headmaster hadn’t been so enthralled once wind of it met his ears, though one _look_ from his darling daughter had worked enough to allow the dog a few nights’ stay passed between the 78th Class’ dorms. How swift Kirigiri had intervened then to allow them all their joy, even without the faintest interest in the animal beforehand. Never would he approach her in the first months of freshmen year, not after his good morning smile had received such a glare, though the memories come back to him of their equal shyness meeting at the middle every so often to have a thin chat there and here, remembers thanking her for convincing her father not to send the dog away, and for the first time he’d listened to her say more than five words in a sitting; “My father owes me much more than a stray dog. I’ll let that debt benefit you all this time.”

Naegi had flinched a tad, and he’d said to her, “...Ah, well...if you ever need anything, I’m happy to help you.”

The glance that had come to it, he still cannot describe, not in logic nor sentiment, and he knows he wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for her. Though her mention is special, every classmate lent him their own strength during it all, and knowing the bond he’d shared with them smacks rawness within his throat. All of them sit in their own compartment within his heart then and now, giving it the volition to beat, beat, beat.

His bicep stings the same as his eyes once he has the gall to blink them. Fingers lift to the wet of his cheek, and he’s quick to be catered to in a palm to the shoulder.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Kizakura assures. “I can only imagine how this must feel. Go ahead, take your time.”

Naegi peers to him a moment, sips in a gust of an inhale. He swallows once and rolls the sleeve back down, and he’s surprised to find the hallway between the six rooms fills the same time he makes to exit after minutes of collecting himself. His gaze shifts rightward to Kirigiri’s soft exit from her own room, though she’s quick to refuse it in a turn over one shoulder. He stiffens. Perhaps she’d recalled something less than appealing about him. But he hasn’t time to dawdle on pondering, for there’s a flash cross the corridor, and he’s more than glad Fukawa’d had all her shears confiscated during their initial pat downs, because he’s quite certain Hagakure would leave the backbreaking embrace he’s caught her in with a blade to the neck otherwise. “ _FUKAWACHIII!_ I’m sorry you tripped over my bag and everyone saw your old lady panties!”

Her face glows red in the thrash of limbs. Naegi notes the smudged fog of her either lens. “G-Get off of me, pervert!”

Hagakure does not require a second telling. She falls to the ground in a heap from his sudden release, for he has more amends to make in a chase to wrap himself around another. “ _KIRIGIRICHIII-!_ ”

“It’s alright, I got the grape soda stain out of my shirt,” she tells him, to which he only beams in relief and squeezes her harder.

“Jeez, you big oaf,” Asahina rolls her eyes into joining them. Behind her Kimura is quick to trail, tucking a hand to the nape, daring no glance met. Their administrators have all vanished, Naegi notices in the sudden, perhaps favoring true work, perhaps all sheep to follow Yukizome’s order to give the six of them their space. But Kimura remains, makes him wonder if she’ll be able to muster the gusto to address them without her same herder’s guidance at her side. For the now, she stands still in her place. For the now, Asahina twists at the waist to grasp her hands.

“You’re amazing, Kimura! I don’t know how we can all thank you!”

“Th...thank...me?” The brush of bangs falls further over her face. Naegi watches her fingers quake. “Don’t worry, I-I...I’m glad to help..! It-“

Whatever _it_ is or _it_ does, they never find out, for there’s an all new _it_ to decipher from the last remaining latched door. The entry clears, and stalking to the threshold comes their sixth, glory in every cell that molds him, though Naegi has grown astute over the last months and cannot resist noticing the red rim beneath his either eye, the thick cough to clear his throat into an elbow fore he straightens back to face them all. And they’re staring, every last one in the crowded hall rests their circle gazes upon him, until it is that he thins those puffy crescents behind his lenses and barks to them, “ _What.”_

Naegi thinks about the puppy again.

“Togami,” he says, the first, the only, to speak now, the only one to ever in this goddamned wretched life show Togami Byakuya a lick of compassion, because that’s who Naegi is and what he never stumbles to offer out, “...It’s okay, Togami. It’s okay to...to _feel_.”

Nearly, he regrets it, once the target falls to rigidity even farther. He’s cautious in his quick storm past to keep clear of touching any other.

Naegi cannot stomach the inch fluffy pancakes Yukizome serves them as a comfort brunch.

Enough has wound by to call a calm, each of them seated in their regular places in their regular conference room. Kirigiri rests an elbow to the table, chin to palm gaze to wall. Togami sits beside him working on his third cup of coffee.

“Um...” A rare sight is it for such a syrup soaked delight to be placed before Asahina and remain most entirely untouched. She looks around the group, at Hagakure tapping fork tongs to ceramic, Fukawa’s white knuckle grip on either plait in her huddle in upon herself, the way Naegi, ultimate hope of all the world, aims downward a scowling with skin written to depravity. It may not be the time, but it quite possibly won’t ever be, so her voice is timid in spilling, “I remembered Ikusaba.”

That drags his nose up from his lap. A similar force finds Hagakure. “Who’s that again, ehh... Phony Enoshima?”

“One of the two nobodies that failed to destroy us.” Though it’s harsh, Naegi is glad to hear Togami at last speak. They meet glances a brief moment before he’s gone back to his brew.

Beyond it, Asahina breathes into nodding. “She...I don’t think I blame her so much, if I’m honest. She was... _sweet_. And shy. I don’t think she would have wanted to hurt anybody, if she hadn’t been brainwashed by her sister...” More than anything, Naegi is over the moon that someone else has said what’s been on his mind from the start, the kind of forgiveness he’s held silent in fearing a traitor’s title. He nods now, stopped in chalk white once she continues a way he hasn’t urged, “...She had a big crush on Naegi.”

“ _Huh?!_ ” His shoulders pinch him straightened. Asahina giggles behind one hand. “I remembered talking to her about who we liked- Maizono was there, too. It took a lot of coaxing, but we got her to admit it was you.”

Naegi festers in the heat of himself a moment, one that cuts off only at a jarring scoff. “Quit your blushing. No woman with a haircut like that could have possibly been interested in men.”

“Togami, you aren’t allowed to say that!” throws back from Asahina, and they all pick up into bickering again at Fukawa demanding nobody tells her white knight what to do, Togami spitting back that her breath is curdling the creamer in his coffee so sharp that she cups her own mouth, Kirigiri perched between it all, stuffing pancake bits gradually into her lips. Comfort brunch.

The day passes onward in little sunshine til they’ve found themselves all aligned in the bathroom anew, brush spit rinse comb scrub, and he’s hesitant in taking alone to the stuffy little room at the end of the hall when a hand meets his shoulder. “Ready for bed, Naegichi?”

Vigor shifts him into a tall rise, looks up to Hagakure in a nod, a grin to mirror, and they walk the hallway together. He’s laying himself betwixt mattress and blanket, his tired ragged self, to the tune of the other rustling around within his bedding like a golden retriever. Naegi exhales once. Their evening is weighted.

By evidence, Hagakure notes that. “Hey, don’t feel down about this morning, huh? Or, y’know, it’s okay if you do a little... My mom always tells me things can’t get better if they don’t feel bad first.” Naegi observes the stars in his dreamer’s eyes as they aim for the ceiling. The blankets shift beneath him. “This part is still the part of the bad part we all went through. It’ll be better, though. People like Togamichi and Kirigirichi need to hear that the most, they’re scared to open up ‘cause they don’t want it to hurt anymore.” Hagakure turns cheek to pillowcase to pin him in that award winning beam of his. “I can’t wait to see my mom again! You’ll all love her chili. I can tell, even without a crystal ball!”

Gentle curves take Naegi’s mouth, and he has not a wise enough reply to grace any of it before the sudden sage has turned over on his stomach to rattle the room with snores. To himself, he purses the lips, bobs the head to determination. It won’t get worse. They’ll fix the future. Together.

Hall light murmurs into the room. He squints upward to it, though Togami offers no return in his slink for the second cot, slipping in to face the wall with the top blanket tugged high. From his own spot, Naegi leans up upon an elbow to peer toward his corner. Breathing, soft, subtle, vulnerable, alive. A whisper of his name meets silence, chased in the next moment with, “I’m sleeping.”

For just them alone, for just this moment where they’ve fallen to solid dark of night, breathing and vulnerable and alive together, Naegi tips his head back into laughter.

The moment goes on enough to coax Togami’s twist over the shoulder, cat eyes sleek in the pitch. “What could possibly be so amusing?” says his harsh whispering. Hagakure _snurks_ a hitched breath in the corner.

Collecting himself, Naegi settles into a smile, looks onward at what he can take in of the other. “Nothing, nothing,” he snickers, coughs into an exhale that asks next, “I was just wondering...what do you think about all of us working here? We could ask Yukizome about it tomorrow.” Still grinning as the day is long, Naegi proclaims so bold, “I want to save the world.”

Across the room, Togami continues on staring, until he’s to pull himself back into place aimed for the drywall. And he tells him, “I think you already have.”

Fervor in the heart, Naegi lays his head back down, and dreams of forever the whole night through.


End file.
